After a lunch from my organic, no-till garden—green beans, barely washed and dipped in hummus, and steaming heirloom Boston Marrow winter squash, baked, scooped, and reheated with pasture-raised cow butter and a sprinkle of sea salt—I headed out to walk the dogs around our land, an old farm I am resuscitating bit by bit. I plucked a misshapen and dimpled apple from one of the many ancient trees, each one different from the next, this one popping with juice and tart sweetness beneath its red skin. I passed the asparagus bed where in May and June I’d broken off tender shoots, raw and crisp, and dined on for breakfast before I even got to a sink to wash them. Across the small grassy lane, I checked the fall raspberries—at their season’s end, valiantly producing despite a recent frost. I picked two to try. Still sweet but not as plump as a few weeks ago. Around the back, the dogs and I stopped at the main vegetable garden to dig the final red fingerling potatoes, and plopped them, dirt and all into a basket for dinner later.
While walking and eating fruits straight from the earth, it occurred to me that processing begins with our bodies. We pick, we chew, we digest. And we are a lot more tolerant of naturally occurring bacteria and bugs than we think, particularly if we are growing our food organically, in small batches, and in fully composted material – manure or otherwise—and if we are healthy. The human body processing food is the most intimate and direct. We look at the food we have picked and decide whether it’s worthy or safe to ingest. It’s interesting to ponder: hundreds of thousands of years ago, we processed mostly with our bodies. We were the processors. Processing on, literally, a human scale.
In comparison, industrial scale food production—from soil to fork—increases possibilities of widespread contamination and harmful bacteria. When food poisoning breaks out, justifiable feelings of lack of control and fear ensue.
For centuries we survived in this country on home canning, raising and slaughtering our own livestock, making cheese to store and use in winter. We processed our food or knew the person who did. I’ve happily eaten delicious raspberry jam canned by my daughter and sweet bread and butter pickles by my friend’s mother. The raspberries and cucumbers were organic, the sugars and preservatives low or nill, and the trust? Well, very high. I’m still alive.
When we eat what we can see growing or being cooked and processed and have confidence in and a history with the grower and the cook, our fear diminishes. It’s food on a human scale and social capital in action, as defined by Jules Pretty, “relations of trust” (Pretty, 2007).
Fear comes mostly from the unknown and from lack of control. (When we know what we fear, we can, at least, do our best to avoid it.) When food industries get too big, it’s a lot harder to know how well they are doing their job.
Yet we relinquish control. As a society we rely and trust big industry to process our foods. When a food scare happens, our blind trust is damaged, and we stop purchasing the food. We extrapolate incorrectly that the same food grown on a small scale could also be just as harmful. But it is the scale of food production, handling, and processing which leads to potential widespread contamination (Nestle, 2006); only a few contaminated eggs, she points out, can contaminate an entire truckload. Mass-produced eggs, chickens, milk, meat – not so safe. Local eggs, chickens, meat, milk - safer. (Nestle, 2006, Kenner, 2008).
The benefits of processing are many – we heat and dry and freeze and can so food keeps safely and we can eat our bounty in the hard winter months. Canned food is actually nutrient dense, stabilizes antioxidants such as absorbic acid, and may increase levels of carotenoids (Comerford, 2015). Freezing and drying has little effect on nutritional value of fresh produce (Nestle, 2006).
But we can go too far in eliminating potentially healthy bacteria in search of safe food. Crosby pointed out that in the 1800s and early 1900s raw milk was the major cause of tuberculosis. However, there is evidence that transmission of bovine tuberculosis from milk to a human would occur only in the most uncommon of cases. There are many types of tuberculosis and most of the transmission was from human to human or cow cough (or snot) to farmer, not raw milk to human (Shmid, 2003). Once again, from where are we getting our research?
I know not everyone can eat from a backyard garden. But I want to encourage those who do, or who have a friend who might let you visit theirs, to pick a bean fresh from the bush and not worry about the bacteria, just crunch down and taste the refreshing snap of green. You'll be fine.
Pretty J. 2008. Agricultural sustainability: concepts, principles and evidence. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 363(1491):447-65
Comerford KB. 2015. Frequent canned food use is positively associated with nutrient-dense food group consumption. Nutrients 2015 Jul 9;7(7):5586-600
Nestle M. 2006. What to Eat. New York: North Point.
Shmid, Ron. 2009. The Untold Story of Milk: Green Pastures, Contented Cows and Raw Dairy Products. Newtrends Publishing, Inc. White Plains, MD.
Kenner, Robert. 2008. Food Inc. Participant Media. Los Angeles, CA.